


re. 

















A MAN’S FAITH 





By 
WILFRED T.*GRENFELL, M.D. 
OF PRIN 
gr "EQ 
DEC 6 - 1826 
< a 


RS 
eo OGICAL Ra 














THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON ss 


New Edition 
Copyricnut, 1926 
By Sipney A. Weston 


Printed in the United States of America 


THE JORDAN & MORE PRESS 
BOSTON 


FOREWORD 


In surgical work we find nothing so 
helpful as “follow up” inquiries after 
our patients have passed from our treat- 
ment. After years have passed away, 
the real results are much more likely to 
be» correctly recognized: It) 1s’ hike 
watching the coming up of seeds one 
has sown. ‘Therefore, when the editors 
invited me to review this little book 
preparatory to sending out a new edi- 
tion, it was with great interest that I 
reread what | had written a quarter 
century previously. 

I see little or nothing to change. 
The new knowledge of this marvelous , 
period has made faith far easier from 
an intellectual standpoint, and has en- 
abled us to be more patient in waiting 
to see the truth, not as now “through 
a glass darkly,” but face to face. It 
seems undeniable that somewhere with- 
in him, deny it or doubt it as he may, 


Bad 


FOREWORD 


every man has faith in God — that in 
his best moments he realizes that he 
has it, and that in his best acts he shows 
it. ‘Christian’ is no longer a term of 
opprobrium;— to say any man is a 
‘real Christian” is undeniably the 
highest honor we can confer upon him. 
Every man has his doubts at times — 
in them there is often much real faith. 
Personally, I believe every human be- 
ing has faith in God, in spite of the re- 
action of his fallible brain material. 
Nay, I am more and more hopeful 
that it is true that all men have it. 


le 





[vi] 


A Man’s Faith 
CHAPTER I 


EN will always go on wanting 
knowledge. That is only natu- 
ral. If Iam going to invest my 

money, I want to know, not to believe. 
But that is just what we cannot do in 
this world. We should all be million- 
aires otherwise, and there would be no 
kind of domestic trouble, because we 
should be wise enough to know that it 
doesn’t pay. There would be no crimi- 
nals. They know only too late what 
fools they have been; and indeed we 
should all be saints on earth, because 
we should always do in advance the 
things we would like to have done when 
we look back afterwards. No, the 
whole secret of this earth is that it is ; 
run on a faith basis. ‘That is what 
makes it such a wonderful world and 
saves it from being a world of machines, 


[1] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


a deadly dull world, a world not worth 
living in. Yet mankind goes on striv- 
ing to believe that it knows, when it 
doesn’t. It strives to have knowledge 
that it knows it has not and cannot 
have. ‘Thank God the men who know, 
if there are any such, whom we call 
“scientists,” are content at last to 
teach that there are things we cannot 
know here. Thus we cannot know 
274° below zero, Centigrade scale, nor 
can we know 187,000 miles a second 
velocity. If you could do either of 
these things you would be living in 
some other world where the laws of 
this finite world with its limitations do 
not exist. 

That is probably what is going to 
happen. We are going to live in a 
world which is less limited, or even un- 
limited, and that is what makes this 
one explicable. When we have trained 
in a world of faith and finality, and 
found out a few things, we shall be 
ready to go into another world with 


[2] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


larger scope of knowledge and larger op- 
portunities for chivalry and knighthood 
and achievement. The very thought 
of it changes my whole idea with regard 
to this life. Life is not a miserable 
failure, to be gotten rid of as soon as 
possible, with its highest ideal a Nir-. 
vana in which we forget everything 
and do nothing. It is a glorious step- 
on a ladder to bigger things. My 
reason tells my faith that it is justified 
in going ahead on that basis — and if 
you only go deep enough down all 
the world agrees. 

Personally, I accepted long ago that I 
have got to begin somewhere and must 
exercise that which is essentially my 
own, my will; and it seems to me in- ' 
creasingly as reasonable to will to be- 
lieve this as it is to will to smile, or to 
will not to eat too much, or to will to 
exercise my body as well as my mind, 
or to believe that J] not only do not 
know it all, but that I cannot know it 
all until I possess a machine very dif- 


[3] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


ferent to the limited brain machine 
that I have now —a machine that is 
capable of interpreting it all. This 
doesn’t stultify me to myself or mean 
that I never expect to be able to under- 
stand it all. On the contrary, it digni- 
fies me to myself; it says that I cannot 
understand it all now, but I am going 
to do the best I can to prepare myself 
for the day when I am going to under- 
stand it all. In fact, I have decided 
that it is rational to employ the will to 
believe things I can’t understand. That 
is why I ate my breakfast. I hadn’t 
the machines to test it out. That is 
why I drink daily of the water in my 
glass; it has done me good so long that 
I just don’t believe that there is a ty- 
phoid or cholera bacillus in it so long as 
I have taken reasonable precautions, 
and on that ground I am just going to 
believe it is good and swallow it. And 
that is what I do with what appears to 
me to be the water of life, the kind of 
refreshment that seems to have vital- 


[4] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


ized men all through the ages into 
actual living sons of God; men who by 
faith took the water of life at the hands 
of God and used it without understand- 
ing quite what it was, but with a grow- 
ing appreciation of it through the 
acceptance of it by faith and the use of 
it in life, knowing that some day they 
would know all about it. A man’s 
greatness is measured not by how little — 
he believes but by how much. 

We are talking about a man’s faith, 
and that is not a fool’s credulity. It is 
the faith of a red-blooded, normal 
human being. Faith is the power by 
which human beings with limited ca- 
pacities visualize the possibilities of 
what they hope for. They are all 
around us. Flaglerwasone. He visu- 
alized the future of Florida long before 
the boom in lots in Miami, and the men 
who are rich in Florida today are not 
the men who knew it all, and knew that 
Florida could be the world’s play- 
ground. Half a dozen men went in on 


[5] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


faith and bought lots, and when the 
others saw that they were making 
money, they tried to get in; and many 
of them got in too late and were left. 
That was because they waited till they 
knew. ‘That’s the story of the world 
everywhere. It is the same in every 
department of life. It does one good 
to read the letters of a man like Doctor 
Alexander Bell in which he says: “‘Some 
day we shall actually be able to speak 
by telephone from office to office, and 
home to home, and city to city.” He 
was finding it hard to interest the men 
who “‘knew it all,” the “‘practical’’ men, 
the men who talk about faith being 
“sloshy stuff,’ and piety being good 
for old women, the men who would not 
dare to put five cents into a venture 
that would have netted them five mil- 
lion dollars if they had had the faith. 
If I had only known what a share in the 
Ford business was going to give as a 
return for an investment, I would have 
had shares in the Ford business long 


[6] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


ago. But I thought I knew, and so I 
did not go in on faith; and I lost out, as 
men are losing every day in the great- 
est of all ventures, the putting of their 
own hands into the hands of God Al- 
mighty in the faith that in that way 
only can they get the really worthwhile 
returns of their little day on this planet. 

There are a thousand other examples. 
Think of old Ehrlich trying out chemi- 
cal composition after chemical compo- 
sition, because he wished to save the 
world from the curse of an almost in- 
visible microbe called the spirochaete. 
It decimated humanity, and it cursed 
the world for centuries. ‘Think of him 
trying out one after another until he 
got into the hundreds. It was six hun- 
dred and six before he got to one that 
gave him what he wanted. It is men 
of faith who have saved the world, not 
men of knowledge. 

Orville Wright was a farmer’s boy. 
He did not have what men call educa- 
tion. He knew he did not know as 


[7] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


much as the mathematicians. ‘They 
knew absolutely that no machine heay- 
ier than air could fly in the air. They 
proved it by mathematical demonstra- 
tion and put it in books that it could 
not be done. But he had the silly 
faith that thought it could, and he 
worked out a mathematics of his own, 
and he made a machine and he took it 
down to Kittyhawk Beach. A leading 
mathematician of the day came down 
to see the experiment. But he knew so 
well that it could not be done that he 
went away and wrote an article for the 
American Scientific Encyclopedia, 
which proved that it could not be done. 
It stood there for ten years after the 
farmer’s boy, full of faith, had made a 
machine and flown in it, and demon- 
strated to the world that progress de- 
pends not on knowledge but on faith. 

There is no progress possible without 
faith. We all wish afterwards that we 
had been men of faith. We all wish 
that we had been like the farmer’s boy, 


[8] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Banting of Toronto, who was fool 
enough to waste time and money, of 
which he had very little, trying to find 
out what was the use of some silly 
looking cells in a hidden gland called 
the pancreas. Banting is saving hun- 
dreds of thousands of lives every year. 
Don’t we wish that we saved one every 
year? We should begin then to feel 
our life was worth while. 

There is many a man on the stock 
market today who wishes he did not 
have to act on faith. But all knowl- 
edge has to be won — like every other 
thing that is worthy of us sons of God. 
The faith we are speaking of is not 
mere assent — it is adventure. A re- 
porter wrote the other day, “Faith is 
not ascent.” ‘That is exactly what it 
is. It is the ladder to truth. Truth 
isn’t revealed cheaply by spirits through 
mediums. If it were, that would be a 
more profitable profession. 

The proof of the correctness of faith 
is the proof of its value, and that is 


[9] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


exactly why a man’s faith in Christ is 
justified, because in the school of ex- 
perimental life it has justified itself in 
every line where it has been tried. He 
himself bade us use that test. I asked 
Mr. Orville Wright once how it was he 
came to go up in the first airplane, when 
he must have known perfectly well that 
he would be killed, because science had 
proved it so. ‘Well,’ he said, “I just 
tried it out.”’ So faith is not a sloppy 
thing that fools can laugh at. 
Christian faith has been betrayed 
many times by those who claimed to 
possess it. But faith in Christ is ever 
justifying itself more and more, and 
whenever any man does anything worth 
while now anywhere around the world 
everyone speaks of it as ‘‘Christlike.” 
The reason why the non-Christianworld 
does not accept the information that 
Christianity is all one needs to make 
him good and happy, is only because 
it is not Christlike. We don’t give 
them exhibitions of real faith in Christ. 
[10] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Some flimsy production labeled “‘Chris- 
tianity”’ does not attract anybody, and 
yet it is so often all we offer. We 
don’t today show any exuberance of 
love as a nation toward those whose 
skins happen to reflect less white ain 
than ours. 

The best definition of faith that I 
know is that it is reason grown coura- 
geous. Moreover, that is all that Christ 
ever asked us for, and the reason he 
asked us for that was because he wants 
to use us. He needs our help. It is 
almost impossible to believe it. But 
God Almighty wants our help, so 
Christ tellsus. ‘Theoretically or mathe- 
matically this is unintelligible, that 
God should want human help. But 
that is the bottom of all Christ’s teach- 
ing. ‘The faith he asks for is not to 
understand him but to follow him. By 
that and that alone can man convert 
the tragedy of human life, full of dis- 
appointments, disillusionments, and 
with so-called death ever looming ahead, 

[11] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


into the most glorious field of honor, 
worthy of the dignity of a son of God. 
What Christ asks is that we shall try 
it out. He actually dares us to follow 
him. In that way, he says, you shall 
win that prize in life, for which any 
man can with perfect reason afford to 
give everything else. ‘That is the pearl 
of greatest price, viz., the actual knowl- 
edge of the meaning of it all ahead of 
time, so that we can invest it well; and 
with that the absolute assurance of our 
high destiny, so that we can walk 
through the valley of the shadow of 
death and fear no evil. It is perfectly 
reasonable, for we now know nothing is 
wasted. Energy and matter are inde- 
structible. So why not life? 

Christ did not ask his immediate dis- 
ciples to understand him. He said to 
the traitor Judas, to that monument of 
doubt, ‘Thomas, to the men who ran 
away and betrayed him: “Go out and 
preach the gospel. Do as I am doing.” 
What he was calling for was action 

[12] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


based on faith, and that is what he is 
calling to us for. He is not offering us 
an insurance ticket; he is offering us 
the water of abundant life, just as we 
are; and as a return, he assures us, and 
we know it to be true, that we shall 
have the secret of the meaning of life. 
We can be rich all life through because 
we know. ‘The faith he speaks of is the 
vision of God that lifts us through high 
moral purpose into greater moral power 
and freedom. 

All prizes of life that are worth while 
are won by the faith that makes us act. 
Without faith we win no real prizes and 
taste no lasting joys. ‘This is equally 
true in business, science, politics, citi- 
zenship and domestic life. ‘Think of a 
runner gloating over a prize that he has 
won without any competition. Worth- 
while prizes we know have got to be 
won. ‘The man who lives on remit- 
tances is never any good. ‘The things 
that make a man good are the things he 
works for; and what a man works for 

[13] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


is what he believes in. Faith makes us 
act and act quickly and fearlessly. 

I have had men tell me: ‘‘Doctor, I 
cannot consent to acton faith. It does 
despite to my manhood. I have got to 
know things first.”” It sounds like the 
man from Missouri. But it is all rub- 
bish. It’s sheer impossibility, and 
would just leave you stranded. A man 
said that very thing to me on the 
bridge of my little steamer one sum- 
mer. We were off the north coast of 
Labrador and we were running past 
some nasty looking rocks. He hap- 
pened to say, “‘I wish I had your faith, 
but ‘Ll «cannot, have it.) 7 Wihy see 
asked. ‘“‘Because I have been taught 
to rely upon my intellect, and that 
would wrong it.” “This is an un- 
charted shore,” I replied, ‘‘and I am 
piloting this ship. It is four years 
since I have been on this part of the 
coast. You are taking a big venture of 
faith if you think you are going to get 
north and back again safely. Knowl- 

[14] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


edge would say to you, ‘Get out and sit 
on that rock.’ You would be much 
safer. I guess I shall stop and land 
you, only you must make up your mind 
quickly.” “I think I will stay,”’ he re- 
plied. ‘I thought you would,” I an- 
swered. And he did, and we got there 
and got home again, and accomplished 
something. If he had acted on knowl- 
edge, he would have sat on that rock 
all night but he would not have gotten 
anywhere. 

What Christ demands is a reasonable 
faith, as he demands the service of our 
reason. Faith is like the little bubbles 
of air which cling to the body of the 
beetle. They appear to be only air, 
but they lift the beetle to the surface of 
the ocean. Faith 1s the air that goes 
into the last cell in the lung and gives 
life to the corpuscles and the body. 
Some people may think it is only 
“hot air,’ but the world is learning 
now that hot air is as material as cold 


lead. 
[15] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


If any one wants a little knowledge 
as to what faith does and can do, let 
him read history. Or let him read the 
eleventh chapter of Hebrews, which is 
history of the men who “‘through faith 
subdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- 
ness, obtained promises, stopped the 
mouths of lions, quenched the violence 
of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
out of weakness were made strong, 
waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight 
the armies of the aliens, of whom the 
world was not worthy.” 

Youth is the time for faith and that 
is the time when man can do things. 
In that way, by the time youth is 
grown up, it will know things. It is 
the young men who go into the cotton 
pit to buy. The old men cannot stand 
the excitement of taking the ventures. 
It is the young men who buy on the 
curb, on the grain and the stock mar- 
kets. You cannot do it when you are 
old. ‘The older fellows know too much, 
and while they are for that very reason 

[16] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


hesitating to make up their minds, they 
lose their chance. 

It is the young men who have more 
courage, and courage is the very es- 
sence of faith. Faith is not the cow- 
ardly motive that leads a criminal to 
squeal for mercy in the hope of escaping 
his just punishment. The weakling 
who cannot will to fight a good fight, 
or to run a winning race, or to control 
his animal passions and keep his body 
under, will find himself in dire need of 
an insurance ticket when his time-glass 
has run out. But that isn’t faith — 
that’s fear. 

What, on the other hand, is knowl- 
edge? It is the conviction gained by 
our own faith put into action, the ex- 
perience resulting from venture, which 
is the kind of knowledge that we trust 
most. How often we say, “Well, I 
ought to know, because I have tried it 
out!’ ‘The people whose opinions we 
ask, as the nearest thing to knowledge, 
are the experts who have tried the 

[17] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


things out. We would hardly allow a 
man to tinker with the engine of our 
motor car who had only just read books 
about it. We want the help of the 
mechanic who has run the engine. We 
don’t expect to know how to play the 
violin by listening to lectures on the 
subject. Sometimes we act, owing to 
the implicit faith we have gained by 
close association and contact with an- 
other fellow whom we trust so much 
that we accept his experience as if it 
were our own. Or we accept the book 
that a man has written whom we have 
not personally known, but whom the 
world has accepted; and with our limi- 
tations we are sometimes obliged to act 
on the general idea that “‘Securus judi- 
cat orbis terrarum.” But we know 
that all these are liable to error. Nor 
must we think anyhow that these tests 
are infallible. Our own interpretation 
may also be wrong. I have known a 
man to see a red house in a green field 
and think it was a green house in a red 
[18] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


field. He was a perfectly reliable good 
fellow, honest as the day, and no fool 
either, but his deductions were wrong 
because his machines were wrong. He 
himself was all right. Does Einstein 
tell the truth, or doesn’t he? No one 
impugns Mr. Einstein’s honor. Was 
Newton right, or wasn’t he, in his laws 
about gravitation and parallel lines? 
Everyone knows Newton was abso- 
lutely honest, but even he may have 
been wrong. Wilson was a noble man 
and more than half America believed 
in him, but he may have made mis- 
takes; . In’ his. time, \heaps’ of men 
thought Lincoln was wrong; some of 
his cabinet did; and there seems little 
doubt that the man who killed him 
honestly thought he was wrong, and 
was willing to sacrifice his own life be- 
cause he thought so. Still, as time 
goes on the world increasingly acclaims 
Lincoln. I have always felt that among 
the people who killed Christ there were 
many who were by no means criminals. 
[19] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Some of them were fanatics, just mis- 
taken. The trouble is that they 
thought they knew, and the most dan- 
gerous people all through the ages are 
the “infallible.” It has not been the 
mystic, the humble man of faith, who 
has been the menace to the world’s 
peace; it has always been those who 
knew they knew it all. 

History invariably proves that knowl- 
edge or science passes away. Most 
rightly do we talk of “‘current knowl- 
edge.”” ‘Therefore, those who insist 
that all others but themselves are wrong 
are always somewhat dangerous peo- 
ple. Just there is one reason for our 
faith in Jesus. People rightly mar- 
veled at him because he spoke as no 
man ever spoke; and yet wherever his 
voice has echoed around the world, ad- 
vancing civilization has been the result. 
The people wondered in his day how he 
spoke with such authority, and the peo- 
ple of today are wondering that he 
alone, of all mankind, has never been 

[20] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


shown to have made a mistake. We 
have to accept that what he said is 
right for every succeeding age. 

Without faith, no progress; without 
faith, no knowledge; without faith, no 
victory; without faith, no business; 
without faith, no joy. We have to 
speak and live and act on faith. 

It is humiliating but true that many 
of the most valuable discoveries of 
science have been made not even by 
deductions from past knowledge. The 
value of quinine for malaria, antimony 
for tropical diseases, mercury for syph- 
ilis, insulin for diabetes, even the vita- 
mines of cod liver oil and green vege- 
tables, and a host of other life-saving 
compounds, had to be discovered by 
faith acting through human beings 
ahead of knowledge. 

It is not fatuous credulity which 
leads man to suppose that life is inde- 
structible. He has always surmised it 
from his knowledge of the things around 
him. Spring has followed winter, the 

[21] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


butterfly the cocoon, and the science of 
today confirms the faith of yesterday. 
For it asserts that not only is energy in- 
destructible, but so also is matter. No 
man can intellectualize where life comes 
from, or where life goes to, but he does 
not know either where matter or energy 
came from or where they go, or where 
anything beyond this bourne of time 
and space will be employed. It is no 
answer to say that energy comes from 
the sun. Where did the sun come 
from? ‘The puzzle as to which was 
created first, the hen or the egg, is only 
a parallel to that of the sun first or 
the energy first which made the sun. 
Beyond this so far as anything called 
knowledge, which man possesses, is con- 
cerned, he surmises that if any energy 
came from anywhere, then all that in- 
exhaustible mass of energy which is in 
the sun came from somewhere or, as 
most prefer to think, it came from 
someone. 

It is not stupidity to think of its com- 

[22] } 


A MAN’S FAITH 


ing from someone. Is not our person- 
ality indestructible? Who or what can 
ever destroy it? Who has ever known 
it destroyed? The baby’s body con- 
tains personality. Throw away the 
baby’s body, the young man’s body 
contains the same personality. Re- 
move the arms and legs, the same per- 
sonality remains. Break the neck and 
paralyze everything except the lungs 
and the heart, which are innervated by 
the long wires direct from the brain, 
and when I have myself talked to a 
man in that condition, he argued that 
he was the same personality. Person- 
ality may be hidden or obscured, or the 
power to reveal it may be greater or less, 
but that depends not on the altered 
personality but on the machines that 
reveal it. I cannot see a tubercular 
bacillus or a cholera bacillus without a 
microscope. Many fatal ones we can- 
not see at all. But even though I can- 
not see it, that won’t in any way alter 
the personality of the cholera bug. 
[23] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Nor if I swallow it in a glass of water, 
just because the revelation of it was 
poor, shall I escape the consequence of 
the mistake. It certainly is the theory 
of every nation, however rudimentary 
and humble, however savage and pri- 
meval, that there is a Someone be- 
yond and above mankind whom we 
call God, and that the purposeful ar- 
rangements and the purposeful acts 
and things that we see constitute life 
on earth, reasonably suggest a pur- 
poser. 

This is unquestionably the deduction 
of reasonable people, practical people, 
so practical that they have moved this 
world more than any other people, and 
have always moved it in the right 
direction; people who have experi- 
mented in the field of their own daily 
lives on the faith that Christ actually 
revealed God to us and was the mani- 
festation of him in human life, by try- 
ing themselves to follow him. But 
what is more, the nearer they have 

[ 24 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


come to following him exactly, so much 
more powerful and valuable have been 
their lives. The silly folk who thought 
that human intellect, or force, or 
money, or rank were more powerful for 
achievement than faith, in the lapse 
of time, as results became unques- 
tionable, were forced to admit that they 
were wrong; that it isn’t man’s knowl- 
edge but the righteousness bred of faith 
that exalteth a nation; that it is not 
man power of any kind, but justice, 
mercy, and truth that make it perma- 
nent and successful; and that a live 
faith in Christ always tends to that 
end. Indeed, it is quite common to- 
day to have the testimony of the heath- 
en Hindu and the fanatical Moslem 
that the powerful but professed non- 
Christian leader Mahatma Gandhi is 
truly a ‘“‘Christlike man,’ because 
though they see little or no value in 
Western Christianity, they see very 
clearly what Christ was and did. They 
see that the spiritual is the real, and 
[25] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


that in Christ the mystic and the prac- 
tical man were united as in no other 
being on earth. 

As one looks back through the ages, 
all the great men are men of faith: the 
Newtons, Faradays, Darwins, Mar- 
conis, men with faith which they con- 
firmed by experiment. Luther and 
Garibaldi, Washington and Lincoln, 
men of action as well as thought, were 
primarily men of faith. But infinitely 
above all, Jesus himself is the supreme 
example of a man of faith. Even on 
his cross he was absolutely confident, 
though as far as any human eye could 
see then, his faith, judged by results, 
was “unreasonable.”? ‘The same is ab- 
solutely true of social life. The men 
who are really great and loved in social 
life are those who have faith in the 
meaning of life. Faith is the main fac- 
tor in achieving the loftiest goal in any 
department of life. Careful statistics 
taken in the United States in 1926 
show that over eighty per cent of her 

[26] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


leaders are men with faith in God, and 
that man needs this power outside 
himself to help him manage his own 
life. ‘Today such men as Woolworth, 
Colgate, Heinz, Kresge, Rockefeller, 
Welch, Wanamaker, Roosevelt, Wil- 
son, Taft, Babson, Mayo, Graham Bell, 
Ford, Cushing, Osler, Vail, Coolidge 
and Morgan are men with faith in God. 

It is not unreasonable to say that 
that which succeeds in reality cannot 
be altogether foolish. That which 
makes man accomplish things cannot 
be sneered away because we do not al- 
together understand it. Radio and 
television have shown us how ridicu- 
lous it is to deny the possibility of 
everything which we do not under- 
stand. ‘To us it seems that the records 
of the juvenile courts in Denver, the 
adult criminal courts in Cleveland, the 
work of the George Junior Republic, 
and generally the method of having 
faith in even those who do not deserve 
it, though it looks dangerously like 

[27] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


credulity, have proved as a remedial 
element in punishment that it is more 
practical than mere philosophy would 
have ever permitted us to suppose. 
These illustrations could easily be car- 
ried further. But I will satisfy myself 
by stating that a simple faith in Jesus 
Christ as the Son of God has been so 
commonly the basis of action in the 
right direction that it has been well 
said that no more irresistible impulse 
could be conceived of than that which 
would animate a body of, say, Scotch 
Presbyterians coming straight from 
their knees with the faith that they 
were about to do God’s will. 

The result of childlike faith has been 
obscured by the endless dilution of its 
simplicity. But the experience of the 
passing years clinches in my own mind 
ever more firmly the conviction that 
nothing succeeds in transforming the 
individual as it does. It still performs 
miracles. It still turns bad men into 
good ones, and good men into more use- 

[28] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


ful ones. ‘“The life which I live,” said 
St. Paul, “I live by faith in the Son of 
God.” Paul certainly lived a more 
useful life than any other man of his 
time in introducing righteousness, joy, 
and peace into a moribund world. His 
was a triumphant life. It is the kind 
of life I should like to look back upon 
when I pass the last bar, and have 
nothing else but my record to take 
with me. 

We must not forget, however, that 
men do not all gauge success in the 
same way, though if they stopped and 
thought more, they would be much 
more unanimous on that point and 
dollars would not loom so large in 
their estimation. I have myself seen 
that faith is so practical a thing and for 
sO many reasons so intensely desirable 
a thing, that I don’t consider myself a 
prejudiced witness when I make this 
statement. I want to believe in Jesus 
Christ because I want to attain the 
ends I know such a faith insures. I 

[29 | 


A MAN’S FAITH 


consider faith, as Peter did, a most 
precious thing. It alone can make me 
master of myself and of the world. 
The apostle said this two thousand 
years ago and I am sure he was right. 
It would be foolish to expect that it 
would be in exact accord with the wis- 
dom of any particular day. Paul wisely 
claims that it is based not on the wis- 
dom of men, but on the power of God, 
which any honest observer can see it 
exemplify. Paul did not want it based 
on the wisdom of his day. He most 
wisely stated, “Our knowledge is always 
incomplete; it will eventually all be 
cast aside.” 

In 1883 while I was working at the 
London Hospital I chanced to turn in 
to one of D. L. Moody’s great tent 
meetings in the slums of East London. 
I was amazed to see on the platform 
with him several men whose athletic 
prowess was world-famous. ‘That was 
a credential to me that it was worth 
stopping to listen to what was going to 

[30] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


be said. I still believe athletic success 
is an invaluable asset to a preacher. 
Christ, | am sure, wants football, base- 
ball, and track-team men in an” age 
when theological expositions, however 
deep and learned, when orthodoxy, 
conventionality, or even correct vest- 
ments and ritual, have so little attrac- 
tion for the young men who will be 
leaders tomorrow. 

I stayed, listened, and learned at 
once one thing: that if I had any faith 
it was not the kind these men possessed. 
As far as I could judge I possessed 
an unreal, spectral image of the - 
genuine article. | would always attend 
a place of worship to please any one 
who wished me to, rather than be con- 
scious of offending him. But my faith 
must have been the nearest resemblance 
to a Grand Bank fog that anything in 
that line can be. I can honestly say I 
had all my life been a more or less regu- 
lar attendant at Sunday church ser- 
vices. But the numberless parsons I 

[31] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


had listened to had never succeeded in 
teaching me that God gave us faith as 
a potent factor in life to enable us to 
do things, and therefore that I should 
expect direct results from it. I can 
scarcely believe they ever tried hard to 
do this, or at any rate were disappointed 
in any way at their lack of success, as 
their Master certainly says he will be. 
I learned at that meeting that what 
the men who spoke possessed was a 
faith worthy of strong men, and I went 
out into those sordid slums knowing I 
wanted it. 

Now that is certainly the first step 
to getting anything. It is the attitude 
of mind we must have if we are to 
obtain any valuable thing. Men often 
come seeking faith as they did of old, 
demanding a special portent for them- 
selves. ‘That is, they begin by saying, 
“If you don’t convince my mind of 
such and such a thing, I’m going to ac- 
cept none of your faith.” As a rule 
valuable things are not picked up in 

[32] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


this world in that way. A farmer, after 
listening to a long temperance lecture, 
soliloguized as follows: “I” preacher 
proved it weren’t no good to no one, 
and he proved it done a lot of harm to 
every one, but he did not prove I did 
not like ’un’, so I means to have ’un’ 
aicer)all.?’ 

How are men to learn to want this 
faith? For four years at college I lived 
with an able lecturer of the Christian 
Evidence Society. Many of his de- 
bates with unbelievers I attended. I 
cannot remember a single one being led 
to faith through these debates, though 
some who had faith already were 
strengthened by it. On the other 
hand, I remember well how the loving, 
unselfish ministrations of a Salvation 
Army lass, who attended one of the 
most vehement of his opponents when 
he was sick and forgotten, brought that 
man to a lively faith that made a new 
man of him. His intellect was no 
longer a stumbling-block. His heart 

[33 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


was won. Intellectual humility is an 
essential stepping-stone to faith. If 
my mind fails to understand the “how” 
and the “why,” I do not dream of 
denying the possibility of a solution be- 
ing found on that ground. | 

Are you seeking faith? How are you 
to get it? Eve saw the apple. Eve 
saw it was good. Eve wanted it. So 
she just put out her hand and took it. 
The poor fisherman was washed over 
the side. Somehow his captain saw 
him struggling in the dark waters and 
threw him a life-buoy that would save 
him. Still he had to reach out his 
hand and take it. So every man has 
to do. Man can’t give it to him; God 
won’t force it upon him. He must just 
take it. 


[34] 


CHAPTER “II 


The mistake about the use of faith is 
the worst mistake in the world. It 
makes young manhood despise faith. 
We mix up the use of faith with black 
coats, clerical collars, monkish gowns. 
We think of the life of faith as unnum- 
bered religious services, convent or 
monastic practices, refraining from 
cards, theaters, wines, smoking, swear- 
ing,: etc. We think of the “soul’s 
awakening” as a desire to cross the 
hands on the chest, and turn up the 
eyes and carry a large book about, and 
probably wear a long gown like a Chi- 
nese woman’s, ill adapted for easy 
movement and exceedingly undesirable. 
To youth, whose chief joy is in achieve- 
ment, Christ is presented as the man 
who went about telling folks not to do 
things. ‘The idea of Christ in a mod- 
ern dress suit or baseball flannels en- 
joying the pleasures of our day is al- 

[35] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


most as impious as meeting him at a 
theater. And yet play is as necessary 
as ‘“‘work, worship, or love to man, to 
live by.”” To divorce Christ from our 
daily life is no way to use faith. 

It seems impious to think of wearing 
rational dress, of baseball, of swimming, 
boating, or of doing anything else we 
really enjoy, in heaven. ‘Thus we asso- 
ciate, in a dumb sort of way, the use of 
faith here below with abstinence from 
everything the healthy young human 
animal naturally loves, and with the 
infliction of numberless exercises that 
he hates. We stimulate him to volun- 
tarily endure these by the prospects of 
a future that we paint as even more 
distasteful. How often I have thought 
I would far sooner not be wakened out 
of my grave if I had to listen to ever- 
lasting harp-playing! I have looked 
at the goody-goody pictures; I have 
read the goody-goody books. I have 
hoped I should not have to lead a lamb 
around on a string. 


[36] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


With all the boys of my acquaint- 
ance, I hated going to church. I have 
made my nose bleed more than once to 
escape evening service, and had head- 
ache and made excuses all I dared. 
My brother was flogged for melting 
toffee on the hot-water pipes in church; 
we left some of the silver paper behind 
and that betrayed us. He was almost 
expelled from school for putting bees- 
wax on the boys’ seats in front of him, 
to the detriment of several pairs of 
trousers. We did all we could to en- 
liven the time we had to put in there, 
and thought it well worth the risk of 
the stick afterwards. ‘There were two 
prayers in the morning service and one 
in the evening I could always sleep 
through safely, to be awakened in time 
to get up when the others rose from 
their knees. The only Sunday service 
I loved was the hour of reading before 
tea, when my mother read to us books 
like Hesba Stretton’s, Mrs. Walton’s, 
Mrs. Gaskell’s. We used to lie on the 

[37] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


floor, or anywhere about. I can tell 
those stories now. I have lived those 
hours over again many times since. I 
have read out of those same books in 
lodging-houses, hospitals, and fishing 
vessels, and they have brought tears 
into eyes I never saw them in before. 
There is a great deal of the child left in 
all of us men and women, and the 
hatred of the child for the conventional 
use of faith is perpetuated in manhood. 
‘The way that repels the child is not the 
way to attract the heart of the adult. 
The right use of faith is not to make 
the whole thing hateful and contempti- 
ble. 

In the countries where Jesus is nomi- 
nally most eloquently and frequently 
advertised, as far as words and sermons 
and ceremonies go, the bulk of the 
people never think of faith in Christ at 
all as a valuable practical asset; as a 
factor for a better community, or pub- 
lic safety; the police, the law, politics, 
diplomacy, are considered infinitely 

[38] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


more practical than any love of God. 
For plain joy or pleasure, a mug oO’ 
beer, the latest motor car, an evening in 
a dive, a house-party at Newport — 
anything is rated higher and more de- 
sirable than faith in Christ. I have 
known the same man to give twenty 
dollars for an electric belt and fifty 
cents to the parson for his yearly dues. 
I was talking to a poor fellow convicted 
of stealing. He had been well brought 
up, that is, he had been made to go to 
church, to read the Bible, and to say 
lasuprayers.” Yet the) idea. of ;Christ 
caring had so little occurred to him, I 
could see instantly the reflex face ex- 
pression which showed me that he 
thought, “Now for some cant.” It 
was the sort of look the men in the ten- 
cent lodging-houses used to assume 
when, after listening to one’s feeble 
efforts at preaching, they sidled up to 
“borrow sixpence for a night’s lodg- 
ing.” We well knew this to mean a 
whiskey. ‘That is to say, they thought 
[39] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


all preaching was done by fools or 
hypocrites. 

What is wrong then? Is it the faith 
itself? I donot pretend to know many 
things, but I do know that is not at 
fault. Once I was blind. Now I see. 
That’s the sort of evidence I base my 
knowledge on, and I no longer feel a 
' shiver when some scientific magnate 
pooh-poohs the Master; for I have 
seen new men made out of old ones, 
prodigals return to newness of life, 
through the simplest faith in him who 
is infinitely too great for man’s finite 
intellect to understand. Only love 
born of faith can do that. ‘Think of it! 
The professors of the inexact sciences 
pooh-poohing the Son of God! 

One of my hardest trials in life has 
been to have to keep the secrets of so 
many people. As a doctor in mission- 
ary life, one finds out so many skeletons 
in cupboards. It is hard not to tell 
news. It is harder still not to tell good 
news. Not to do it makes you feel as 

[40] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


a boy felt after a Christmas dinner — 
as if he *‘must burst.” But it is worse 
again when you have a truth that you 
know to be a truth, a truth of infinite 
practical daily value forever to those 
you love best, and yet you cannot tell 
it. You can say it. You can quartet 
it. You can monotone it. You can 
say it in a black coat, in vestments, at 
matins, at evensong, at the solemn 
feasts, at the new moons. But still 
you have not conveyed your truth to 
your dearest friend, the man who 
shared your rooms, and studied and 
competed with you, who played on the 
team with you, and who trusted you 
with a pass five yards from the enemy’s 
goal line. Yet he won’t take it from 
your lips that faith in Jesus Christ is 
worth a red cent — won’t accept it, be- 
cause it can’t be gotten that way. We 
believe in him not because any one 
told us, but because we have seen him 
ourselves. 

Alas! the heathen, the stranger, who 

[41] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


knows not your inner life, is more likely 
to listen. Where is the fault? Is the 
faith in Christ really not of value? Or 
is it that your use of the faith fails to 
commend it? If you are really eager 
to give that inestimable gift to your 
friend, your husband, your darling boy, 
and fail, is there something wrong 
in your use of it, your method of 
commending it? Does it not make 
a man’s heart cry out, “My God, is 
my conventional use of faith the cause 
of preventing others from accepting 
Em Ne : 
We are in the deepest trouble as I 
write. ‘Two boys that we loved and 
trusted have been found to have been 
for weeks betraying our trust. ‘There 
is no question in our hearts of revenge 
or retributive punishment. ‘The whole 
issue is, what remedy can save these 
lads that we still love, save them for 
usefulness for the Master that we know 
they are capable of? Is faith in Christ 
able to do it, and how shall we 
[ 42 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


use it? I am absolutely certain it can.! 
But I know you will ask, How shall 
the converted man use faith in his own 
life? How shall he do God’s will? 
First, he must absolutely, finally de- 
cide he is willing to use faith, willing to 
do God’s will as far as he knows it 
every time, willing to pray with Jesus 
in deed as well as word, “not my will 
but Thine.” Beyond that no human 
being can lay down the law for another. 
It must be understood that no reserva- 
tion must be allowed. Jesus could not 
come down from his cross. All your 
heart, all your soul, all your strength — 
either give it all consciously, or give it 
all up, I should say. Lukewarm ad- 
herents will be turned out anyhow. 
The problem of the use of faith was 
first presented to me when I was a 
medical student in East London. I 
knew well enough that singing and 
praying about faith added no strength 


1Both these lads now, twenty years later, are earnest, 
clean, Christian men, bringing up families in the love and 


fear of God. 
[ 43 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


to it. One reason that had kept me 
from the pious men, or “‘pi-men” as 
they were called, had been that I con- 
sidered them good at little else but 
piety. My tastes had not all altered 
because I had become a Christian man, 
nor had my common sense deserted 
me. 

I wanted to use my faith. Frequent 
meetings at night in rather stuffy 
rooms, attended mostly by women, had 
no more attraction for me than before. 
At these, also, so many prayed for 
things I could not raise any enthusiasm 
for, and as my Master prayed mostly 
alone, I decided there was, at any rate, 
no necessity for me to trespass further 
on my evenings. Moreover, I very 
soon abandoned attending two services 
on Sunday. ‘There is a selfishness in 
singing hymns and prayers that God 
may do things for us and others, while 
we do nothing but the singing. I 
knew more than one good soul, usually 
in Mayfair, with spiritual indigestion 

[ 44 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


and irritability from over-indulgence. 
Our parson, good man, gave us a Bible 
reading Sunday morning, and made his 
evangelical appeal at night. ‘The first 
pleased me, because I always gauge the 
value of a sermon by the new thoughts 
I can write into my Bible from it. 
Many a pilgrimage I-made to hear Dr. 
Joseph Parker. ‘The second pleased me 
because it enabled me to leave and go 
out into the highway and echo the ap- 
peal as well as I could, which I did 
from the top of a box many times. 
Among the Christians, so called, of 
my own circle, whom I knew at that 
time of my life, none were actively 
“doing anything at it” that attracted 
me. ‘l'wo energetic acquaintances went 
on Sundays to fasting Communions 
(alas! I never saw much difference be- 
tween them and any one else in any 
other way). If I must confess the 
truth, in a dilemma like this, even then 
it still seemed strange to ask God about 
so everyday a matter as what I ought 
[45 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


todo. If any of my college friends had 
told me they had done something as an 
answer to prayer, the result of my own 
deductions would have been that I 
should have been hugely amused at the 
joke. It would have brought a blush 
to my face to venture to tell them any- 
thing of the kind; indeed it should 
have done so, for it would have been 
quite unnatural. To prove my esti- 
mate of the value of personal prayer at 
that time, I was giving an hour a day 
before breakfast, in Victoria Park, to 
throwing the sixteen-pound hammer, 
and an hour at night to running around 
the Hackney common in the dark to 
train my body, for I knew that was 
practically valuable. But I seldom 
troubled myself to repeat more than a 
sleepy general petition before going to 


bed.! 


1After twenty more years, I still think the truest prayer 
is most often unexpressed words. Prayer is so like one’s 
breathing or the heart beating; it is really unconsciously go- 
ing on. The words Christ gave us are enough for some 
natures. The short prayer of the man in the street may be 
as real as the longer ones of the monk or the mystic. 


[ 46 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Long prayers have not now become 
a habit with me. The Master himself 
at times prayed for long hours, and 
there are special occasions, perhaps, 
when we all can feebly imitate him 
there. But I don’t for a moment be- 
lieve now that we are to be heard one 
whit more for our much speaking. 
Hard-work praying is quite another 
matter. If we are willing to submit 
our will to his, he knows our hearts, and 
can guide our actions and words today 
as quickly as he did Nehemiah of old 
in the king’s presence. 

I have attended live, helpful prayer- 
meetings. But if ’m tempted to gos- 
sip, or scold, or be vain and selfish, or 
to waste time and talent, or to set a 
poor example, what is the use of wait- 
ing for church time or prayer-meeting? 
A brief ‘“‘“God help me” at the time is 
more reasonable. Or again, if [ve 
done a mean act to any one, the only 
honest or effectual prayer is to go and 
put it right. That is the only kind of 

[47] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


prayer that calls for Christ’s spirit, and 
helps out more next time. Surely in a 
matter so closely affecting his own 
kingdom as prayer, Jesus gave his dis- 
ciples the best advice possible when 
they asked him. ‘The wording he gave 
was exceedingly brief, and the main 
petition was that we might do his will 
in his strength. 

The answer to my prayer for work 
was the offer of a boys’ class in a Sun- 
day-school, which it cost me no little 
effort to accept. From the few sugges- 
tions made and requested, it might have 
have been as easy a task as teaching my 
terrier to situp. As far as I judged, a 
few words at a weekly meeting, asking 
God to do the bulk of the work, was 
sufficient qualification for success. | 
was soon to be sorely undeceived. If 
ever I felt like a fish out of water, it 
was when I walked into that, my first, 
Sunday-school, and heard myself called 
“teacher” by a number of unkempt 
urchins. Even the illustrations from 

[ 48 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


the ‘“‘guide-book to the lesson’? seemed 
lamentably ineffective in appealing to 
them, and I went out discouraged. By 
plodding along, I taught them who 
killed Goliath, and much more useful 
_knowledge, a good deal of which was 
not in the guide-book; as for instance, 
that it did not pay to come to school 
as long as you sucked peppermints, and 
that the use of hair oil meant ‘“‘out 
you go.” 

But I seemed as far from their hearts 
and confidences as ever. Here, how- 
ever, I must state my deepest convic- 
tion that absolutely the only essenitzal, 
initial assets are devotion to Jesus 
Christ and common sense if you wish 
to be a successful worker in the King- 
dom. Our English Sunday-schools are 
very different to the American, and 
mine did not commend itself to me any 
more after my conversion than before 
it. It was altogether too mild an en- 
tertainment to satisfy my desire for 
work. As I knew, however, what had 

[ 49 | 


A MAN’S FAITH 


appealed to me, I decided to try that. 
I started a movable gymnasium in our 
sitting-room with one night a week for 
boxing, fencing, and gymnastics. ‘The 
parallel bars were the only trouble to 
fix. This, at least, taught the boys we 
could beat them at other things be- 
sides Bible stories. In this way we 
learned to trust and to love one an- 
other, and this soon gave me an entry 
into their homes. But the idea of 
boxing displeased our parson, and I was 
ignominiously dismissed from the roll of 
teachers. The adaptable dining-room, 
however, served excellently for a class- 
room, and when [ started anew all my 
old pupils, unbidden, sought a place. 
Using. my faith on the same princi- 
ple, I regularly took my poor lads with 
me for my summer holidays, rather 
than leave them in their sweat-shops 
and on my return tell them what a good 
time I had been having while I prayed 
for their souls. My boys learned to 
swim, to row, to sail a boat, to play 
[50] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


football, to box, to drill, to handle a 
gun, etc., and the class increased largely 
in numbers and some are still among 
my best friends today. ‘The outlay 
called for by my faith along that line 
has paid me personally all the way. 
The afternoon class, however, left 
Sunday night free, and I had the good 
luck, as I thought, to fall in with a 
young Australian doctor who was study- 
ing at the hospital and preaching in the 
slums of Radcliffe Highway on Sunday 
evenings. I have long since learned to 
consider this an answer to my prayers. 
It makes me now feel that religion 
has grown with me to be altogether 
‘“‘too respectable’ as I think of the 
ragged school we held there, and the 
short evening services in six or seven 
underground lodging houses. No one 
steals the hymn-books now, or comes 
to service with his eyes blacked by the 
1 During the past twenty years, testimonies from old 
pupils, now fathers of families, have made'me realize how 


my feeble efforts were repaid a hundredfold and what a 
splendid laboratory a Sunday-school is for a teacher. 


[51] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


police, or breaks the pictures and fur- 
niture because you get in a minute or 
two after time, or kicks you hard as 
you throw him out for misbehavior. 
It seems strange how much we two en- 
joyed that odd work. Perhaps it is be- 
cause we liked things by contrast, be- 
cause it gave one a better change and, 
therefore, more rest, than going down 
for a week-end to some friend in the 
country and having an extra dinner, 
with a cigar and a snooze afterwards on 
a lounge in the conservatory, even if one 
salved one’s conscience for the loss of 
opportunity by subsequently attending 
,evensong. ‘There is a terrible danger 
to faith in too much respectability. 
The world’s smile has danger for the 
follower of Jesus Christ, and it kills the 
spirit with all the subtlety of a nar- 
cotic, being pleasing to the sense from 
the beginning. When the Church of 
England became too respectable, God 
raised Methodism, and with Method- 
ism, the Salvation Army. 
[52] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


How to use faith among my com- 
panions and my superiors was quite 
another question. I was then unable 
to give an answer if my equals said that 
Huxley and Tyndall, Berthollet and 
Voltaire, Froude and Renan, Morley 
and Mrs. Humphry Ward and others 
had pulverized the claims of Jesus. I 
could only argue that I believed, be- 
cause I did, like the woman who sank 
in the pond for the last time, snapping 
two fingers to indicate “‘scissors.” It 
was worse with my superiors. Every 
time that I found a man sneering at 
faith whose intellect I bowed down be- 
fore, as a student will before his teach- 
ers, a cold shiver would run down my 
back, or would leave my heart like 
lead till I got back to the tonic of my 
boys of the ragged school. All my life 
I had been nominally a Christian, and 
yet I certainly had no experience to 
argue from. ‘The results of previous 
years had left in my mind only the un- 
expressed deduction that Christianity 

[53 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


was nearly a failure, and its adherents 
among young men only those poor- 
spirited ones who sought a through 
ticket to heaven. 

I cannot help inserting here an inci- 
dent that greatly helped to clinch in 
my mind that the right way for me to 
use faith was to live it. We had been 
playing a big football match, and I was 
captain of our team. Afterwards we 
dressed in a saloon parlor. While 
dressing, a great crowd of men were in 
the room and someone, mounting on 
the table, began reading and vilely 
commenting on a portion of the Bible. 
It seemed natural enough to ask the 
man to refrain till I was no longer 
forced to be present, to which, sheep- 
ishly enough, he assented. Some years 
later, a poor student who had gone 
wrong, to my great surprise came to 
ask advice from me. He had ap- 
parently been in the saloon at the time 
of the above incident. He told me 
that my feeble protest had gone home 

[54] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


to his heart. Such unimportant trifles 
apparently are the right use of faith, 
and I feel sure that a protest against 
doubtful things naturally and modestly 
made in places where such things would 
be expected to go unchallenged, does 
more for Christ’s cause than much 
more voluble ones made in gatherings 
where everyone is looking out for such 
things. 

God forbid I should underrate the 
value of being able to enter a word of 
intelligent protest against false state- 
ments, such as that missionaries are 
the cause of half the wars, that men of 
science have given up faith in miracles, 
etc. But when the brain is not able to 
devote time to learning answers to 
every question, a man must be satisfied 
with some other way. More than 
that, I feel that to refute an argument 
is never so powerful an advertisement 
for Christ as an act that is a testimony 
to his power to change men. 

One more personal experience I feel 


[55] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


constrained to relate. I have often 
been asked how I came to choose Lab- 
rador or the deep sea as a field for a life 
work. It is my habit to ask God con- 
“ stantly, to teach me each day how to 
rightly use my faith. J have never had 
any doubt that he does so. Yet I can 
honestly say that I never went through 
any great crisis of deciding to renounce 
the pleasures of life and accept the 
“‘self-sacrificing life of a missionary.” 
On the contrary, I ardently looked for 
a niche in the world suitable for my 
talents, and left it entirely with Him 
whose guiding hand I have been able 
to see in the events of my life as plainly 
as ever I saw a pilot’s hand directing 
my vessels on the many coasts I’ve 
sailed along. 

My idea of pleasure has always been 
a realization of utility, either to the 
body, mind or soul. Cards waste 
time; they literally ‘‘kill it’ — they 
have some value sometimes, possibly; 
but so has everything, even the swill 

[56] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


for the pigs. Few theaters really help, 
though I feel an increasing number do, 
for which I thank God, for the drama 
could be more widely instructive than 
the lecture room. Alcohol, even in 
small quantities as a beverage, is un- 
necessary. It is responsible for end- 
less sin and gross cruelties. My hatred 
of it as a drink increases with the ex- 
perience of the years. No good soldier, 
willing to go over the top for Christ, 
can use it, much less sell it for profit. 
Christ, however, made no list of taboos; 
and I cannot do so either without un- 
justly criticizing others, like those who, 
from my own childhood, I have seen 
using these things. Christ puts them 
on the basis of “Love your brother as 
yourself,’ and Paul says nobly, “If 
meat make my brother offend, I won’t 
touch it till the world ends.” 

It gave me the keenest pleasure to 
go to sea. It was a perfect delight to 
find that I was the only, and, therefore, 
the best doctor there. The display 

[57] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


and waste of long dinners, the shallow 
gaiety and tawdry pride of the ball- 
room, the endlessness of intellectual 
dialectics, the twaddle of voluminous 
correspondence, and the unreliable pad- 
ding of the Sunday papers held no at- 
tractions whatever for me. I couldn’t 
tolerate the display of costly jewelry — 
for me it added no attractions to a per- 
sonality — very much the reverse as a 
rule. So I found no great deprivation 
in the simple life among the fishermen. 
Theology was unknown; there were no 
sects at sea, and when the work sought 
me absolutely without any seeking on 
my part, I gladly accepted it. ‘That 
doesn’t account for Labrador. No, it 
doesn’t. ‘There has been a little effort, 
possibly, about leaving home. But for 
enjoyment of life, body, soul and spirit, 
‘I can only say that each field of life 
I go into seems more delightful than 
the last. From this I argue that the 
right way of faith must be an enjoyable 
use of it. I don’t for a moment believe 
[58] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


God intends his servants to have long 
faces; and if their work is a misery to 
them, they ought to get out of it. For 
it cannot be where they are intended 
to be. ‘To be like Jesus certainly can- 
not be to be unhappy and look wretched, 
as the medieval pictures of conven- 
tional religion represented him. 
Knowledge has greatly increased with 
these passing years. ‘The new modesty 
of science is the best contribution of the 
past twenty-five wonderful years. Now 
we may even understand how the spir- 
itual is the real — how Christ’s resur- 
rected body could pass through walls 
and doors — how nothing can be de- 
stroyed, and that, after all, matter is 
only a manifestation of energy. Intel- 
lectually, faith is much easier than it 
was when twenty-five years ago our 
scientists knew it all. The East too is 
calling loudly for it. People there are 
confessing that Christ is necessary to 
save them — the world is getting near 
enough to him to be able to appreciate 
[59] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


him better with mere intellect. But 
faith is still the supreme necessity as it 
ever must be in a finite world. We 
know now how knowledge vanishes 
away —we are beginning better to 
understand how Faith, like Hope and 
Love, is eternal. 

Towards God the use of faith is 
unquestioning trust and submission. 
‘Towards man it means to cease arguing 
and disputing and to begin to echo that 
love which Christ himself evinced for 
all mankind, good, bad, or indifferent. 
He who loveth best, serveth best, and 
will readiest overlook wrongs done him- 
self. Unlike Mrs. Grundy, the Master 
was not everlastingly scenting errors 
and exposing the sins of others. ‘The 
Master said hard things about hypoc- 
risy and much about want of faith, but 
very little about the Magdalene and 
the man who stole his brother’s share 
of the property. 


[ 60 ] 


CHAPTER III 


My first aid to retaining faith was a 
determination to keep it. I deter- 
mined that if intellectual difficulties 
arose, I would wait till, like Henry 
Drummond’s unanswered letters, they 
answered themselves. And if they 
never did, well, I would wait till the 
mystery of life itself was solved. Asa 
rule [ found on that principle that in a 
week or two I forgot all about them. 
The fact was I had a lot of medical 
work to do. 

What did eternal punishment, eter- 
nal reward, eternal personal identity, 
the time the last day should arrive, 
predestination, postmillennialism, the 
meaning of the horned beast, the scar- 
let woman, the authenticity of St. John, 
the science of Genesis, the authorship of 
the Pentateuch, the puzzle about Cain’s 
wife, infant baptism, the misdeeds of 
parsons and so-called Christians, mat- 

[61] 


A MAN’S FAITH 





tertome? I hada kind of intellectual 
puzzle-box, and into that they all used 
to go, and I then got time to “‘keep-a- 
going.” ‘The story of Lot’s wife helped 
me more than Guinness’s ‘“‘Approaching 
End of the Age.”? Our Lord’s remarks 
about the man who put his hand to the 
plow and looked back did me more 
good than all the books of the Christian 
Evidence Society. As for conferences, 
I got behind the cloak of that magnif- 
icent patriot and hero, the cupbearer “ 
Nehemiah, and declined invitations 
even to Keswick, because that was the 
only time I had to take my Sunday- 
school class to camp in North Wales; 
and later to Northfield, also, because 
that is my busiest season among the 
fishermen. 

I cannot give any reasons why, be- 
yond what I see Christ doing in the 
world today, but simply state the fact 
that now, forty-three years since I 


/ heard D. L. Moody and his men tell 


what faith in Christ can do, I believe 
[ 62 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


my faith has grown into knowledge. 
If that great man could rise from the 
grave and walk in here now, I fancy 
myself simply getting up and saying, 
“Mr. Moody, you were plumb right.” 
Perhaps under these unusual circum- 
stances I should, however, add, ‘“‘Were 
you not?’ Shall I ever forget the only 
other time I ever saw him? It was 
fourteen years later in a Boston hotel. 
“Mr. Moody,” I said, ‘“‘fourteen years 
ago I put my faith in Jesus Christ after 
hearing you. preach.” “Oh,” he. re- 
plied, looking me up and down, ‘‘and 
what have you been doing since?” On 
my replying, he said, “Well, you don’t 
repent it, do you?” “Certainly not.” 
“Well, come to Tremont ‘Temple this 
afternoon and tell them just that, and 
then you can go in the upper gallery 
and speak to your next-door neighbor. 
We were rather short of Christians up 
there yesterday. Good-bye.” He never 
asked me a single question about being 
a premillennialist, or even one from the 
[ 63 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Shorter Catechism. Can any one 
suppose God will ask us those conun- 
drums? 

Some one may say, “‘Your way to re- 
tain faith is just stultifying yourself. 
God gave you reason to know the 
truth.”” Agreed, but we don’t all learn 
it out of Mill’s Logic, or the Greek 
Lexicon, or the new theology, or Ger- 
man criticism, or the Koran, or the 
Vedas, or the book of Mormon Doc- 
trine, or “Science and Health.” No, 
nor out of the New Testament either. 
Though I personally believe the New 
‘Testament to be the Word of God, still 
I am doubtful if Christ ever intended 
us to pin our faith on the New Testa- 
ment or any other book solely, to say 
nothing of verbal inspiration. I think 
he would have written a book himself, 
and made sure of guaranteeing its au- 
thenticity for all time; or at least he 
would have seen that more than two 
out of the twelve apostles gave an ac- 
count of his life in writing. Job was 

[ 64 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


anxious to have his words written in a 
book with leaden and iron letters, and 
so they were eventually, though I do 
not know that I could not get along 
very well if they had not been. But 
we have no record that Jesus Christ’s 
words, though they advance such stu- 
pendous claims and include such abso- 
lutely appalling statements that they 
have upset kingdoms, swept the civi- 
lized world, and transformed the nations 
who listened to them, were, so far as I 
know, ever written down at his per- 
sonal request, or even at all till a very 
long while, many years, after his death. 
With him ‘The worp was made flesh 
and dwelt among us.”’ And the proof 
of its truth lies in the abundant life it 
everywhere carries with it. 

Jesus wrote in far more indelible 
letters. He wrote in language in which 
the knowledge of the succeeding ages, 
as it grew in extent and showed the 
science of the past to have been foolish- 
ness, has as yet found no flaw. He 

[65] 


% 


A MAN’S FAITH 


wrote in letters which the wayfaring 
man, though a fool, could understand; 
yes, can understand today, if only he 
will. He wrote in letters “which those 
who run may read,” and that is a very 
necessary calligraphy to the twentieth 
century. For every one is so much on 
the run, he has less and less time to 
devote to bell, book, and candle. He 
wants sky signs, and what is more, I 
believe these are there for him on 
every hand if he will only take time 
to look at them. Mahatma Gandhi in 
India, the Sadhu Sundar Singh, the 
Christian General in China, the ac- 
knowledgment of the historic Jesus by 
some of the leading Jews in America, 
are all witnesses to the living Spirit of 
the Christ among us. A year spent in 
“ visiting modern mission stations right 
around the world has made me wonder 
how the prejudice against ‘“‘Missions”’ 
can justify the ignorance which there 
is of the marvels that are being done in 
Christ’s name, —in Egypt, in Pales- 
[ 66 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


tine, in Kashmir, in a hundred different 
ways, by the preacher, by the teacher, 
by the healer, by the social worker, — 
all around the world our intellects 
were absolutely convinced of how alive 
and active the Master is in his world 
today! 

Young men fresh from victories of 
faith in China, India, Japan, and the 
uttermost parts of the earth always get 
a hearing as they tell in plain English 
what they have seen. Many men 
wonder why there is such an increas- 
ing number of student volunteers. It 
is because these men know they will 
““see something for their money.” Men 
get fired with enthusiasm and will give 
themselves and their all as readily to- 
day as by the Galilean lake for the 
real article, for that which does things, 
for that which “gets there.”” Men with 
capacity of Mackays will go to Uganda 
to live and die among savages, to engi- 
neer for Christ. Clowes will go to 
India to build canals; men of the per- 

[67] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


sonality of Livingstone will go to 
Africa to explore for Christ; men of the 
business capacity of Duncan will go to 
Metakatla to build cooperative enter- 
prises for redskins. Military magnates 
like Charles Gordon will live in the 
slums of Greenwich, and we may all 
know men of wealth and social position 
today away in the outermost places of 
the earth living their whole day of life 
out there for Christ, just as well as 
they would have done in the first cen- 
tury. Not a solitary one of that kind 
of preacher has ever come home whin- 
ing that no one will listen to him, and 
that his churches are empty. Write 
and preach in the language and letters 
in which Jesus told us the same message 
of good news; work in the ways and 
the spirit he worked in; walk in the 
footsteps he trod, and men may argue 
and talk and criticize higher or lower 
till doomsday, but the masses of man- 
kind will still flock to hear you, and you 
won’t merely tickle their ears, you will 
[ 68 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


renew their lives. You cannot help 
retaining faith in a fountain you see 
giving the water of life to men dying of 
thirst. Recently I saw a man stand 
up before a large audience on the Lab- 
rador Coast quite unexpectedly. He 
said simply: “I came to this harbor 
blind for years. My home was ruined, 
my children hungry, and I was broken 
and wishing to die.”” ‘Then pointing to 
a white-headed man, he said, ‘That 
man gave me sight. I paid him noth- 
ing. When I asked him why he did it, 
he said, ‘For Christ’s sake.’ ’’ Seven- 
teen years has this surgeon been a 
volunteer on our far-off coast. 

Then, if you are “‘losing faith in the 
Gadarene pig story,’ you won’t miss 
that one miracle so much if you have 
to abandon it. For, if it is not irrev- 
erent to say so, you will have a dozen 
solid facts you could swear to in a court 
of law from your own personal experi- 
ence, which will be ten times more help- 
ful to yourself and to other men today 

[ 69 | 


A MAN’S FAITH 


than your final decision as to the fate 
of those unfortunate animals. If you 
have the evidence of “‘that which you 
have seen and heard” to give, instead 
of being ruled out of court by the ma- 
jority of men because they appraise 
your evidence as unconvincing and in- 
admissible as mere book knowledge, 
you will be the most valuable witness 
for the Christ, and the most dangerous 
foe to the devil of doubt. You'll be on 
the same level as the imperturbable 
but undeniably blind man, whom all 
the priests and learned men could not 
faze because he entirely upset them 
all by sticking to the fact, ‘fone thing 
I know.” ‘One thing at any rate 
I do know, and that is, | was my- 
self blind, and now I see.” If you are 
anxious to help others to retain faith, 
get out and do something for Christ’s 
sake. 

Moreover, if you want your own faith 
to be anything but a weakling, —a 
“‘sensitive plant,’’— use it, keep it about 

[70] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


with you. Don’t be ashamed to show 
it and speak of it naturally as one would 
of one’s business or pleasure. ‘The hot- 
house of an artistic edifice, the ornate 
trappings of faith’s environment, may 
give it a spur when it is drooping, but 
it is a poor environment in which to 
keep it permanently. It will surely 
make a weed of it if you don’t get it 
out into the open again very soon. 
Fads and faddists will be the outcrop. 
The cold storage of the convent or 
cloistered cell, the high fence of eccen- 
tric garments, would be no help to me. 
These seem only like keeping your 
plant in a pot in the house, where 
plants that survive healthily for long 
are very rare indeed. 

It was the evidence of the great 
growth of the Kingdom which Jesus 
founded, and still possessed without 
display of physical force, that so im- 
pressed the great Napoleon. The fact 
is, to help faith all men want testi- 
monies; whether it be an applicant for 


[71] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


a position, an investment for money, 
or a family doctor, we ask for “‘recom- 
mendations.” Men want to see that 
faith in Christ means regulated social 
problems and political problems, and 
transformed human hearts and homes. 

There is a growing revolt against 
conventional religion. ‘Thought is free, 
and the expression of it ever getting 
freer, both in word and action. ‘Thank 
God for it. Men are beginning to see 
what they need, and so better to say 
what they want. Who needs preachers 
without a life-giving message? Such 
men are worse than useless as adver- 
tisements for faith nowadays. 

Here is a good advertisement. A 
certain poor working-girl lived near a 
struggling widow with four children in 
a large city. She had no money to 
give her, though faith prompted her to 
do so. So she went and taught her the 
way in which she earned her own living, 
that was by special washing of fine 
articles, and eventually shared her 

[72] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


rooms, and so she successfully bore the 
widow’s burden with her. 

Here is another. A man with four 
children was left on this coast with one 
barrel of flour to face the winter, when 
December set in. He could buy more 
only if he caught some fur, and would 
then have to go and haul it nearly 
twenty miles himself, weak as he was 
from poor diet. While I was sitting 
with him, one of his neighbors suddenly 
came to his door and told him that his 
family of seven had eaten their last 
crust two days before. The man, for 
Christ’s sake, gave the fellow a baking- 
pan heaped full of flour, out of his one 
barrel. 

Here is a man whose sole support for 
his family depended on a four-hundred- 
dollar net in which he had invested his 
all. Yet, for the sake of his neighbors 
he, a professed follower of Christ, would 
not go out to save it from drift-ice on a 
Sunday. ‘The one did for Christ; the 
other gave for Christ. ‘The last made 

[73 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


a sacrifice at great cost for Christ. 
Which makes you love and believe in 
Christ, these humble evidences of his 
power today, or those non-committal 
disquisitions, that correct ritual, that 
flowery language from the (Pee last 
Sunday morning? 

My faith having partly come through 
the foolishness of preaching, I do not 
think of preaching as folly. But my 
personal faith now is far more helped 
by seeing the fruit faith bears than by 
anything else. Personally, therefore, I 
preach (or try to) as an adjunct to my 
professional or other work, rather than 
as the principal remedy for unfaith, or 
the most effectual weapon for Christ. 
Our staff is a company of doctors, engi- 
neers, teachers, sailors. I have lis- 
tened to an appeal for faith in Christ 
made by the cook on my steamer, 
which was more eloquent than many 
I have heard from lawn sleeves! It 
was impossible to sleep through that 
discourse, or tobe indifferent to it. It 

[ 74] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


was simply a series of facts, which, as 
I knew the speaker, I knew were true, 
and they went right home to their 
mark. 

It is true that much excellent, unself- 
ish work is being done without any 
definite recognition of faith in God, or 
perhaps, of the deity of Jesus Christ as 
its base. Most helpful as have many 
such efforts been to me, Hull House in 
Chicago, or Dr. Edward Everett Hale’s 
work in Boston are far from making me 
feel “‘there is, therefore, no room for 
Jesus Christ today.” I err, if err I do, 
on the other side. A while agoon a 
journey I lodged with a revival preach- 
er, and we fell to talking of a certain 
fisherman who had been plucky enough 
to add the work of a cooperative store- 
keeper to his daily work, that he might 
thereby help to fight the hateful truck 
system of trade, which was holding his 
fellows in slavery. ‘The evangelist, a 
right good man to my knowledge, re- 
gretted the storekeeper was not a 

[75] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Christian. I quoted, ‘‘Christ says, 
‘He that is not against us is for us.’ ” 
“No,” he replied, “Christ doesn’t say 
that; he says, ‘He that is not with us 
is against us.’”’? I was glad when we 
looked up chapter and verse that he 
expressed no sorrow that Christ had 
made such a generous criterion. I 
feel the spirit of Christ often dwells 
where no label is attached. Labels 
are untrustworthy things anyhow. It’s 
safer to judge by the fruits which the 
tree bears. 

Whatever factor it is that makes men 
do good or unselfish work, let us by all 
means welcome and praise it. But | 
can only say still that I have found 
that faith in Jesus Christ as the Son 
of God makes men do that which 
nothing else will, and bear and suffer 
with equanimity that which nothing 
else would. I have seen walk into the 
anzsthetising room and lie down on the 
table with a bright smile on her face, a 
delicate girl, who was to undergo a 

[ 76] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


severe operation that meant life or 
death to her. The dread of the knife 
is magnified by the unfamiliarity of the 
people on the coast with modern surgi- 
cal statistics. At Assuit in Egypt, the 
wealthy young son of the mayor, a 
Mohammedan of the strictest type, 
walking one fine day across the great 
granite dam over the Nile, saw a beg- 
gar baby girl fall off into the seething 
cataract thirty feet below. ‘Taking off 
his fez and coat, he climbed to the para- 
pet and leaped over to try to save the 
child. He laid down his life. He 
didn’t lose it. Afterwards, in his note- 
book, I saw in his handwriting, “Jesus 
said, ‘A man must lay down his life for 
others.’ ”’ 

Faith in Christ is precious for other 
purposes than as a motive power to 
service. More than once I have had 
to go to the door of some tiny cottage; 
within was a happy wife, a loving 
mother, and prattling babes; the hum- 
ble surroundings of the home have 

[77] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


eaten into my soul, as they cried out of 
the hard toil and the loving care of 
him on whom even the bare necessities 
of life depended. For I was there to 
carry the news that the strong hand 
that toiled would never again bring 
help and comfort, that the brave heart 
which meant all the world to these 
helpless ones was lying silent in death. 
At that moment, if ever, I have known 
what faith in Jesus Christ meant, both 
to me and to others, a knowledge I can 
personally only lose when for me, also, 
all the apparent paradoxes of our hu- 
man. life shall be solved, or silenced, by 
our last friend or grim enemy. 

I have said nothing about the ration- 
ality of using the will-power to maintain 
our faith, the determination to keep it. 
It seems to me just as rational as a 
determination to keep anything else at 
any cost. Faith is a living thing, and 
will die if its environment is permitted 
to become incompatible. ‘This is in 
our control, and that control must be 

[78] 


A MAN’S FAITH 





exercised. Faith’s immediate environ- 
ment is body, soul, and spirit; and 
their health means its health, and their 
health depends on their environment. 
Too much fasting or feasting will under- 
mine the health of each of these. We 
can overfeed the body. An Alexander 
can die of surfeit. We can overtax the 
mind; much learning can make men 
mad. We can lay burdens on men’s 
spirits which they are unable to bear; 
or, again, we can wrongly feed or under- 
feed the body; we can let the mind 
atrophy, or choke it with rubbish; we 
can let the spirit starve for want of its 
“daily bread.” 

The health of the body involves 
avoiding doubtful indulgences, and a 
man is not to be condemned if he 
avoids alcohol, coffee, tobacco, or rich 
foods or meat under certain circum- 
stances. It is surely a sign of wisdom 
to exercise the will in selecting food for 
the mind. Endless trashy literature, 
unnecessary conventional correspond- 

[79] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


ence, special and extra-special editions 
of useless information, are not condu- 
cive to mental salubrity. Too many 
conventions, multiplication of “‘ser- 
vices,’ just as much as narrow puritan- 
ism or dry-as-dust ecclesiasticism, are a 
danger to the soul. Mr. Moody said, 
with his sound common sense, “‘Once 
to take in on Sundays is enough for the 
Christian man. He would be a strong- 
er man if he used the rest of his time 
giving out.” 

Again, the wisdom of Christ stands 
out before the ages. He kept the Sab- 
bath, the feasts; he observed the Jew- 
ish ordinances. But he did not con- 
demn the Samaritans or his disciples 
for eating corn on the Sabbath, and he 
left no hard-and-fast rules for observing 
the first day of the week. Yet our ab- 
stinence in little things may be more 
far-reaching as a help in retaining faith 
than we might suppose, and a man is 
not necessarily a hypocrite because he 
won’t work on a Sunday, won’t play 

[80] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


cards for money, or is a total abstainer. 
If the white men in the South have 
voted “‘prohibition”’ solely for the sake 
of their black population, who is to 
throw stones at them? Six years ago 
all the States voted prohibition. 'The 
rich and the rumsellers are trying to 
defeat the law made against themselves. 
Law is essential but the only laws that 
can make a new world are made in faith 
for himself by each individual. 

While the body is growing it needs 
more care in its treatment. More con- 
scious educational efforts are conceded 
to the mind while it is young and ex- 
panding. But the spirit never reaches 
maturity this side the grave; it must 
grow or die. So surely we must exer- 
cise effort on its behalf with sedulous 
care to life’s very end, when the ‘“‘gates 
of pearl” are closed behind us. Thus 
control and exercise of the whole man 
are essential for the maintenance of a 
faith that has life. We cannot drift to 
heaven like dead fish down a stream. 

[81] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Salvation must be worked out. Who, 
then, is to exercise this supreme con- 
trol? Is it my will only, or God’s will? 
“Not my will, but Thine,’ was the Mas- 
ter’s goal of prayer. ‘““Teach me to do 
Thy will” must be the petition and de- 
sire in the heart of the man who wishes 
to retain faith. 

The practical issues of the above are 
obvious. The choice of food should be 
by knowledge rather than by natural 
appetite. How many babes on this 
coast perish from the ignorance of 
mothers, how much suffering and loss of 
power and how much expense are in- 
curred in this very harbor from sheer 
ignorance and want of effort to know 
more of dietetics! How much time 
men lose in reading books that would 
not receive the endorsement of one wise 
man as useful, or even as fit food for the 
mind! Fiction enough to stimulate 
our imagination and keep us human is 
surely sufficient. 

To me no book has heen as helpful 

[ 82 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


as the Bible. I do not believe in mak- 
ing people promise to read so much 
each day, as if it were a nasty medicine, 
or in binding one’s self to do that. 
Common sense tells us that if it is to 
‘be good fertilizer for a seedling faith, 
we must use it so as to understand it. 
To me the Twentieth Century New 
Testament has been a great help be- 
cause it is in newspaper language, and 
that is specially designed to convey 
ideas easily. The English of the Au- 
thorized Version may be as improving 
as the Latin of the Vulgate or the 
Greek of the Septuagint. But I go to 
my Bible for practical information as 
much as I do to the medical journals. 

If my skipper confined his reading of 
the Coast Pilot to versions printed in 
King James English, I should soon look 
out for someone else to keep me off the 
rocks and bring me to the haven where 
I would be. We don’t blame men in 
Wall Street for reading the financial 
news in modern American, and the 

[ 83 ] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Christ needs men in his service to be 
more up-to-date and alive and efficient 
even than stock-brokers. His men 
should be ahead of their day, as he was 
of his. The only commentary for ref- 
erence I ever cared for was Matthew 
Henry’s. I heard Mr. Spurgeon say, 
“Tf a man hasn’t got it, he should sell 
his ‘coat ‘and set 1tY?)\ Itsas practreat 
as Mrs. Beaton’s cookery books. 

But I am no authority on books for 
helping faith. I scrawl all over my 
copies of the Bible. It makes them 
feel more like old friends. They are 
cheap enough, and when one gets illegi- 
ble, you can invest in another. It isa 
great help to me to look back and see 
how my own faith has grown since last 
I annotated the same passage. 

Much mental economy can be ef- 
fected and much strain avoided also by 
regulation of the use of all the modern 
luxuries of civilization — especially the 
telephone. I often wonder if having 
one’s number in the book doesn’t really 

[ 84] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


make one lose more than one gains. 
Cases of too much Christian work for 
the best health of the spirit have been 
reported. But mortality from that 
cause has not been a serious item in my 
small experience. I think I have seen 
more danger from a condition corre- 
sponding to “‘nervous prostration,” and 
induced by similar causes — too little 
work, not enough fresh air and exercise, 
too much introspection, and on this 
coast too much of that excellent text- 
book, The Family Doctor. ‘This always 
reminds me of a friend who purchased 
a black bear for a pet. He put it to 
hibernate in a barrel when winter came 
on, and then he buried it. But he kept 
wanting to see if it was still there. So 
he dug it up after a few weeks only, 
and thereby woke it up and nearly 
killed it altogether. 

Faith must be used to keep its vital- 
ity. No faith can survive long with 
the sleeping sickness. It soon becomes 
flabby and useless. 

[85] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


Again, it will do the man who willing- 
ly indulges in pursuits and practices 
that he believes to be wrong no harm 
to find out that he has no real faith. 
The same may be said of the man who 
does not make every possible reparation 
for transgressions. But there is no ex- 
cuse or authority for such a man’s 
allowing the devil of shame or the fear 
of man’s ridicule to prevent him from 
again coming to the Christ for the 
cleansing that must precede renewal of 
faith. The fatal apathy into which so 
many such victims fall is probably the 
most fatal malady that befalls hu- 
manity. 

So I must end where I began. I am 
determined, God helping me, that no 
man shall rob me of my faith. I won’t 
hide it away. I’ll keep it right around 
with me, if I can. I will see it gets 
exercise. I will feed it all I can, so 
that it shall not starve. J won’t force 
it if I can avoid it, and make it weedy 
and weakling. It shall say no things 

[ 86] 


A MAN’S FAITH 


it does not believe. When in real dan- 
ger, if I can, I will go to someone 
stronger than I to help to keep it safe. 
But when that necessity arises to whom 
shall I look for help? Surely, directly 
to Him who I believe gave it to me. 
For I know ‘‘Whom I have trusted, 
and I am persuaded that he is able to 
keep it against that day.” 


[87] 














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